Since 2015, the majority of humans on the planet have lived in a city, a share expected to reach 68% by 2050. In 2030, 9% will be concentrated in the 33 largest cities around the world, where 15% of the global GDP will be produced. The “capital of cities” will not be a European or Western one but will be in Asia - and it will not even be Chinese. Rather, Jakarta will take this title, the capital of Indonesia, which, by 2030, will boast 35 million inhabitants, becoming the largest city in the world.
How to imagine urban development in such a scenario? What role should be assigned to the cities of the future as habitats for a civil society? How to design and provide answers to the living, working, mobility and social needs of citizens?
This is the starting point for the reflections of Paolo Verri, professor of Urban Development and Major Events at IULM in Milan and IED in Turin and author of “Il Paradosso urbano” [The Urban Paradox] (Egea), featuring stories of nine cities that have overcome crises, adopted innovative strategies and achieved concrete results.
“Cities will increasingly become the places where the future of the planet is shaped, where new social models and enduring peace initiatives will be experimented, where frontier research and unprecedented cultural cooperation models will be developed” – this is the book’s underlying message. “The key thing will not be competition, but sharing good projects and information”, without resting on one’s laurels.
This is because “a city is like a tortoise that moves slowly yet steadily, made up of citizens and coalitions striving to achieve transformation through change,” Verri explains, paraphrasing his book. “Mayors, like Achilles, will never reach it. The tortoise will always move just that little bit that makes perfection unattainable. Working means always striving towards the future”.
New cultural paradigms for new urban models
Culture, participation, sharing of objectives, relationships and knowledge: these are the key aspects for the future of evolving yet cohesive cities. “Those involved in urban development will increasingly focus on sharing cultural objectives, providing new rhythms and common lifestyles, and less on the economy,” predicts Verri. “The role of politics is to create a coalition focused on the future, engaging the citizens to build ‘fragments of the urban landscape’. Words like ‘tourists, consumers, public’ should be abolished: there should only be ‘temporary citizens’ who take care of the cities they visit. This is the UNESCO spirit: a resource belongs not to the citizens, but to humanity as a whole”.
But how can a cultural approach shape new cities? Verri observes the ongoing transformation, starting from afar. “The European urban model traces back to the 13th century, which saw the development of marketplaces along the Italo-Franco-Belgian and German routes,” he recalls. “Today, the first major challenge is to consider the absence of cash, regarded as an outdated instrument. Recent history highlights the shift of cities from trade centres to hubs of social interaction and knowledge sharing. Despite the virtual forum, journeys for first-hand experiences and encounters are on the rise: it would be wrong to call this phenomenon ‘overtourism’, as we are all tourists in the knowledge exchange”.
History, therefore, has seen in the “European model the emergence of squares as meeting places, where sedentariness dominates, fostering sociability and clear forms of urban democracy”. Conversely, the urban layout of North American, African, and occasionally Asian cities entails “linear transit corridors, where short stops and the emphasis on swift entry and exit prevail”.
Indeed, one of the most discussed and perhaps sought-after models recently is the “15-Minute City”, alongside the proliferation of Zone 30 areas, which “revives the pre-20th-century model, overwhelmed by the need for a single major version of the mobility and private car business,” says Verri. “The urban design (forma urbis) should serve to create social interaction, but cities need to incorporate strong elements of reciprocity, along with consistent related services”.
A need that should emerge in possible mobility models: “Car or bike sharing replaces private vehicles and could be managed by cooperatives for neighbourhood-specific mobility, similar to what already occurs in university campuses or shopping centres. Young people are progressively less interested in owning private cars, and in the future, citizens will increasingly seek public mobility as a key factor in urban development choices. The garage, for example, critically essential in the 1980s and 90s, will increasingly turn into a space for energy storage”.
Cooperation and participation
Cities are expressing their roles through cooperative models with other cities, sometimes seeking to bypass state systems, a restrictive framework that is also challenged by the so-called “digital nations”. Beyond the geopolitical balances and the digital landscape, with its irrepressible dichotomy between security and freedom, culture plays an ever-increasing role in uniting people and ensuring that cities are not merely “urban aggregates”, but forums for participation expressed by individuals. “Previous generations worked more than 700,000 hours in a lifetime; we will work no more than 450,000 hours and in the remaining time, we engage in culture in various forms. We can dedicate this time to communities and cities as valuable means for sharing social objectives.”
Different tools are available, including innovative participatory approaches, public-private partnerships cooperating towards common good, and major events capable of driving change in urban settings. Some examples? In Italy, Turin underwent a transformation from a post-industrial city to a design capital and university city during the 2006 Winter Olympics. Similarly, Matera, a southern Italian city once overlooked by tourists, changed its destiny by becoming the European Capital of Culture in 2019. Cities as “places where things happen” and where individuals realise life projects grounded in collectively shared cultural narratives and selected values. The other protagonists of the book are Barcelona, Pittsburgh, Lyon, Milan, Istanbul, Tokyo and Wroclaw.
“Today, we have an endless number of cultural products to better understand society and to create new tools, not in solitude but in collaboration with others: if the aim of our life is to be together, to forge satisfying relationships and to look at happiness as the objective of one’s existence, we must commence from there,” Verri concludes. “Of course, it would be necessary to establish a sociocultural exercise that enables us all to live better with much less, but on these subjects, we are reluctant to start a discussion...”.